


My heart can't stop beating

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Hunger Games, I had to write a THG/Riverdale AU at some point, I mean...it had to happen, so here it is!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 15:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16579604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: Betty Cooper is not the kind of girl who gets sent into the Hunger Games.But Jughead Jones is precisely the kind of boy who does.





	My heart can't stop beating

 

**day 1**

 

There’s a hole in Jughead’s left shoe.

It’s small. And it’s not like he had a backup pair he could’ve worn instead. But it’s noticeable when he pushes his big toe up against the rough canvas, his dull gray sock peeking through, on the verge of developing a hole itself. Sitting here on the train, staring down at his dirty shoes against the polished wooden floor, he feels hot, sickly shame curdle in his stomach.

He feels stupid for it: why feel it now, why feel it at all, when in a day they’ll have new shoes for him to wear, and in a few weeks he’ll never have to worry about shoes again.

A few weeks from now, when the winner of the 63rd annual Hunger Games is crowned, it won’t be him. And Jughead Jones will never worry about shoes – about _anything_ – ever again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He doesn’t hear his name the first time it’s called. He’s still reeling from the sight of Betty Cooper screaming, pushing past the other 16-year-old girls, grabbing her sister’s arm, and walking up to the stage.

His mouth and his ears feel like they’re full of cotton. Betty’s up there crying, and he can’t understand why she’s still there, why no one has come out yet and sent her back down because obviously this is a mistake. Betty Cooper is the baker’s daughter. Betty Cooper is from town.

Betty Cooper is not the kind of girl who gets sent into the Hunger Games.

Then he realizes the boys around him have gone eerily silent. They’re staring. Staring at _him_. Archie’s hand is clenched around his right wrist, grip so tight it’s almost painful.

“Jughead,” he says.

_“Forsythe Jones?”_

This time he hears it, sees Cheryl Blossom’s lush red lips forming the shape of his name. She sounds impatient. She turns her head away from the microphone as she flips a lock of hair over her shoulder, but not so far that the entirety of District Twelve can’t hear her huff.

Jughead starts to walk, but stumbles. Archie’s still gripping his arm like it’s a lifeline. “Let go,” Jughead tells him, and Archie does, his mouth falling open in silence.

Betty moves to embrace him when he reaches the stage, but he steps back slightly, almost instinctually. She looks stricken. There are dark patches down the front of her white dress, damp with tears. He forces himself to look away, out into the crowd.

Jughead Jones can’t kill Betty Cooper.

But he won’t comfort her, either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Betty Cooper is not the kind of girl who gets sent into the Hunger Games.

But Jughead Jones is precisely the kind of boy who does.

Even so, he’d tried to convince his younger sister otherwise. “You don’t have to worry,” he’d told her that morning, putting a plate of toast on the kitchen table before her.

Jellybean was eight. She didn’t need to know that there were 20 slips with his name on them in the boys’ bowl this year. That the toast halfway to her mouth was from bread made of tesserae grain.

Their father was still in bed, and so Jughead had helped Jellybean get ready for the Reaping: made her breakfast, braided her hair, heated the iron, ironed her dress. He’d taken a bath, combed his hair, and ironed the nicest shirt that he owned, a faded blue button-down. The sleeves that had fit just right last year were too short now, and he’d rolled up the cuffs so they sat just above his elbows.

F.P. didn’t emerge from his room until it was nearly time to leave.

He’d taken one look at his son and daughter, standing side by side in their Reaping best, and stumbled a little against the doorframe. “It’s today,” he’d said, with a hint of bewilderment, scratching at the few days’ worth of stubble on his cheek.

“Yeah,” Jughead had said, and taken his sister’s hand. “Guess we’ll see you there.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Betty sits next to him on the couch, leaving a cushion’s width between them. Her eyes look puffy and bloodshot, but they’re dry.

“Jug,” she says softly, and just the sound of his name from her lips is enough to overwhelm him. He turns away, pressing one hand against his temple, willing himself to keep it together.

She doesn’t let him. “Juggie,” she says again, and pulls his hand away from his face, “Look at me.”

He meets her eyes for the first time all day. Betty Cooper is one of those rare people who looks even more beautiful when she’s sad, he decides; the Capitol will trip over themselves to love her.

Jughead shakes his head slightly. “Why would you volunteer?”

Betty’s mouth twists but before she can speak a door slides open behind them, footsteps approaching. Veronica Lodge. Kevin Keller. Their mentors.

Veronica drags a chair over to face Jughead and Betty and sits primly before them. Her dress is black and her lips are mauve and even though he’s been dimly aware of her for nearly his entire life – _Victor Veronica, the first from their district in more than 40 years_ – deep down Jughead can’t believe she’s really from District Twelve.

Kevin walks straight to the bar at the end of the compartment and starts pouring drinks, his back to the other three.

“Well,” Jughead breaks the silence. “Are you going to tell us how to win now?”

The look on Veronica’s face is so pitying he wants to stand up and punch a wall, but before he can move Kevin is there, pressing glasses crisscrossed with gold into his and Betty’s hands. “Drink it,” Kevin orders.

Jughead does, unthinkingly, and whatever’s in the glass burns as it slides down the back of his throat. Betty gags beside him. “What _is_ this?” she croaks.

Kevin looks between the two of them. “It’s ginger ale and whiskey,” he says, like it should be obvious.

“If you don’t want to vomit your feelings up at the dinner table in half an hour, you’ll drink it,” Veronica says.

“Ginger settles the stomach,” Kevin tells them pointedly.

“And whiskey dulls the nerves,” Veronica adds.

Jughead looks at Betty. He shrugs. And he finishes his drink in a single gulp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner is for all five of them, Jughead and Betty and Veronica and Kevin and Cheryl Blossom. Cheryl sits at the head of the table and only picks at the greens on her plate, her eagle eyes hyper-focused on watching the rest of them eat.

And oh, does Jughead eat.

There are three kinds of meat and two kinds of fish. Sliced potatoes in a creamy sauce, beets and carrots simmered in their own savory juices. Green soup with a flavor he can’t describe any better than as _fresh_. Buttery rolls, and even more butter to spread on them. (There’s even an oddly flat little knife meant just for that purpose, as he learns when Cheryl sharply corrects his use of the one with toothed edges.)

He eats until it hurts, and when it hurts he thinks of Jellybean and his father, at home, eating the deer meat that Jughead had traded for at the Hob just yesterday. _We’ll have a feast when we get home_ , he’d told his sister.

He wonders now if that’s what had condemned him: that bravado, that faux-confidence, overheard by some trickster god who laughed as he nudged Cheryl Blossom’s red-tipped fingers just a hair to the left, to Forsythe Jones, _that’s right, right there, that’ll show him, the ignorant fool._

 

 

 

The train won’t arrive in the Capitol until the morning, so he’s given a room to sleep in, all to himself. He uses it to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling.

In the middle of the night, there’s a soft knock at the door.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts for a _very_ long time - over a year! I finally felt like working on it some more and decided I may as well release it out into the world. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with it but hopefully some of you will come along for the ride :) Also just a heads up that the rating may change at some point.
> 
> The title is from Robyn's "Human Being", which is also my recommended listening for this story.
> 
> If you have a moment and are so inclined, I'd greatly appeciate any comments you might have! I had a lot of fun thinking about which Riverdale characters would match up with their Hunger Games counterparts so I'd love to know if you've got your own headcanons about that :)


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